A Company Man

A man traveling in a post-apocalyptic united states shares stories that reveal his complex religious beliefs and explore the strange cultures which have emerged as society forgets the past.

There was a girl in the trader’s shack who was missing a leg. She was shrouded in a thin sheet but it was so hot that she was sweating and looked uncomfortable. She was seated on a filthy mattress by the glass box. She looked up to me with dead joyless eyes . Her skin was pale. Her hair was thin and matted in big clumps. She was very thin. I smiled at her but she only stared at me blankly.

                The trader said “What do you have?” I met his eyes. He didn’t look desperate enough to try to rob me and he didn’t look healthy enough to get away with it if he tried. His leathery face was sweaty and covered in red pustulating blisters, the kind that don’t ever get better. My maman called them sun buns. Everyone got sun buns eventually but I’d managed to avoid them mostly. I wear my hat indoors too and I think that helps. I reached down into my pack and pulled out a box of moldy blue disintegrating cardboard which I set upright on the table.

                “Pop Tarts.” the trader said, reading the white squiggles of text on the box. I hadn’t known what they were called but I had opened one of the little aluminum packages inside and I had eaten the two little rectangles inside. They looked like tack but they weren’t. They were American. And they were sweeter than all hell.

                The trader said “Sugar?”

                “Sugar.” I said. I opened the little cardboard flap which I had cut out of the box revealing five neatly arrayed packages. There were six packages, but like I said, I ate two of them. There were two in each little package. The wrapping was blue and shiny. I think the wrapping alone was worth something. I saw the trader’s eyes widen. I drew one of the packages out and pulled the foil open carefully so that the two rectangles inside wouldn’t fall apart and so that the bright blue foil didn’t tear. I got the two rectangles out and held them in my palm with one stacked on top of the other. The white crust on the top was sprinkled with colorful little bits that looked like stars. I split a piece off of the top rectangle, careful to show him the red crystalline stuff on the inside. That was the sugar. I handed him the piece and set the rectangles down on top of the wrapper.

                The trader’s eyes lit up when he put it in his mouth. “Wow,” he said, “Sugar. Where’d ya find em?”

                “Old building. Had this hallway full of metal boxes. I got at em with a pry. One by one. I’ve got two more boxes. Most of the metal boxes had books, one of em had the pops though. I also found some writes and other things. Paper too. You need paper?” I reached into my bag and set the two unopened boxes of pops on the table. I also pulled out some assorted papers that I’d piled in the bottom of my bag. A lot of them had writing on them but they were still a decent find. Not as decent as the pops, but the paper would have gotten me food enough for a few days. The pops had to be worth more paper than I could have carried though, even if I’d filled my cart with it. The writes were worth something too and there were many different kinds. There were wood ones with charcoal on the tips and plastic ones with black pearl on the tip. Some of the plastic ones had blue on the tip. I don’t know what makes such a blue. I left the red ones behind because they had blood on the tips. I didn’t like the idea of carrying American blood about in my bag. That seemed a good way to attract ghosts or grey skins.

                As I put everything out on the table the trader asked if the girl, who was still giving me the evil eye, could have a piece of pop. I nodded and broke a piece off for her. It was bigger than the piece I’d given the trader. I handed it to him and he got up from the table to take it to her. “This is called a pop tart,” he said, “It’s from the old times.”

                The girl spoke. Her voice was weak. “It looks like tack.”

                “It’s not tack. It’s sugar. Remember gum? It’s like that.”

                “You said I’m not supposed to eat gum.”

                “You aren’t supposed to swallow gum. It’ll get stuck in your stomach. You can swallow this.”

                She took the scrap of pop tart into her hand. She looked at it carefully, sniffed it, then took it into her mouth. The girl didn’t appear to react but the trader smiled and turned towards me. “She likes it,” he said. And she did like it. She crushed it in between her teeth and after pushing it about with her tongue a little her stern expression was broken apart by a delighted little grin which she tried to hide.

                I broke a little piece off for myself and handed the rest of the pop tart to the trader. There was still a whole one on the table. “Here. Give her this,” I said. The trader did as I said. With the whole big piece in her hand she hesitated and looked back at me. The lighthearted expression on her face melted away. The suspicious look she gave me when I first walked in returned.

                “Go on,” I said, “You can have it. It’s okay.”

                The girl turned to the trader. “Is this a sale?” she said.

                “Uh,” the trader paused and looked at me. He wiped a sheen of sweat and pus from his eyes “do you want some time with her?”

                “No thanks,” I said.

                “Oh,” The trader said. It clearly wasn’t the answer he had expected, “It’s a gift then?”

                “It’s a gift.”

                The girl looked at me again, still unsure, but she said “Thanks.” She took a small bite of her pop and hid the rest of it away in her blanket.

                “Well,” the trader said as he sat himself back down at the table, “what do you want?”

                We negotiated a while before we came to an agreement. I would give him twenty-four pops, keeping the remaining pops within the opened box for myself. I would also give him the paper, writes and a few other oddities from my cart. In return he would give me a can of SPAM, three cans of tomatoes, and a bag of rice. He opened the bag of rice to show me that it was unspoiled. I took a handful of it out and eyed the grains carefully for worms or rot. Such was the custom. I put the handful back into the bag and nodded at him.

He also let me fill up my water jugs using a little pump in the back. The sun was already high up in the sky by that time though and the land in all directions was white hot and deadly. There was a little patch of a garden in the black patch of soil that ran about the edge of the shack. The plants were protected from the sun by some clear plastic paneling. Still the plants were yellowed and brittle looking despite the moist looking soil that had been gathered for them. It smelt like night soil. Not that I should complain, the only soil that’s left is the night soil. Later on, when I was readying to go the trader asked that I contribute to it. I did. This too was the custom. A man who’ll sell you quality rice can’t expect you to like what he grew it in.

The pump where they drew their water had a solar panel that laid at an angle at the top of an aluminum pole but the trader explained that the panel didn’t work anymore. He didn’t know how to fix it. I supposed that no one knows how to fix it. Maybe the Americans. I had to use the manual lever to pump the water up. It was metal and it was too hot to touch with my hands but the trader let me borrow his gloves. I had never worn gloves before. They made my hands sweat as I pulled against the weight of the lever. Whatever mechanism was inside of the pump, it made a harsh grinding sound as I pumped and the lever would get stuck at the top. I was already drenched and weary by the time the first drops of water came.

It was a rusty brown color and full of sediment. The trader warned me that the first of it would be too hot even to touch as it sputtered out but I held one of my plastic jugs up to catch it just the same. I filled the whole jug before I got to the cold stuff. I cupped the cool water in my hand and splashed it on my face and neck. I had not had a proper bath in what must have been two months. That would have been when I crossed the grey muddy river that folk in those parts called the Red and I had come out of that filthier than when I went in. There had been black pearl on the surface that shined with little rainbows in the sunlight. Nothing grew there but the water had been mightily cool. My companion and I drank that water. My companion keeled over sick a few days later. He died. But I’m still walking. I took his hat. Something to remember him by. It’s another spare.

The trader also gave me enough duct tape to fix my boot, which was in real bad shape, and two bullets. That brought me up to four. The bullets were smaller than the two I already had but they still chambered. I took the two bullets I already had out of the clip and loaded the two smaller bullets in so that they were on the bottom. I wasn’t sure they’d fire but I hoped they’d fire. They were all that the trader was willing to part with in any case and I doubt he had many more.

He helped me put the food onto my cart, which I’d rolled up just next to the house, and he even fixed my wheel, or straightened it anyways. It rolled just fine before but it looked truer after he hammered on it a few times. By the time I was all repacked it was so hot outside that there could be no moving on so the trader let me wait in his shack with them.

“You can sleep,” he said, “but there’s not really anywhere for it.”

The trader put his pops away some place out of sight. He poured me a tiny glass of rain water out of a glass jug. He didn’t have much of it. The glass he gave me was nothing more than a sip and it was hot but it was the cleanest water I’d seen since I left home. I swished it around in my mouth a while before I swallowed it.

“Good eh?” The trader said. I nodded and glanced at the girl. The girl was still on her mattress but she was no longer eyeing me. She was laying on her back with her one leg up on top of the glass box. She had a book in her hands. She was reading. It was said that in the old days the glass boxes told stories but I’ve never seen one do anything but reflect the sunlight. I’d heard people tell stories, I’d heard people read stories even but I’ve never seen a glass box do either of those things.

“Both of yas read?” I asked.

“Yar.” The trader said.

“How so?”

“How’d we learn?”

I nodded.

“I learned when I was a boy. I was with the Mormons then. But her?” the trader pointed to her, “I taught her.”

“Is she your girl?” I asked. I suspected not.

“No. Pale folks left her on account of her leg. She’s smart though.”

The girl put her book down over her breast and looked up at us sideways. “Quit talkin bout me.” She said.

“What’s in your book?” I asked.

“It’s a story”

“I know a story,” I said, “But what’s the story?”

“It’s about a place called Chile. There was this girl whose parents were in a war with a bad man named Pinochet.”

“I’ve never heard of any place called Chile.” I said.

“I think it’s make believe.” She said.

“Oh.”

“No, no,” the trader said, “That one’s real. That one’s a memoir. Chile is in South America.”

“A memoir?” the girl said.

“Uhuh. The author wrote down her memories.”

“Like a journal?” I said.

“Sort of.” The trader said.

“I knew a guy who kept a journal. He’s dead now. But he used to tell all these stories about where he’d been. Sometimes he’d read what he wrote to us he was traveling with.”

The trader nodded. “Where are you headed anyways?”

“South,” I said, “To the Mormon boat.”

“Sorry to tell you, but the boat sailed friend.”

I shrugged. I had heard that already from an old man on the road. But he tried to eat me so I didn’t believe him to be telling the truth. I was still set on the idea. The boat might pick me up if they saw me on the shore. Or maybe I could swim out to them.

                “Did you come from Utah?” the trader asked.

                “Winnipeg.”

                “I’ve never heard of that,” the trader said, “Which way is it?”

                “North a long ways. It’s nothing but ash now. Buried in it anyways.”

                “Buried in ash?” the girl said.

                “Yessum,” I said. The girl was sitting back upright on her mattress now. She let her leg hang off of the mattress onto the concrete. She broke another piece off of her pop tart which was small enough that she could conceal it in her fist and began to nibble at it while keeping it hidden at the same time. She looked to me with something close to friendliness. She wanted me to continue speaking. She wanted me to tell her more.

                “Yessum,” I said, “Far North. Winnipeg. Folk from further north showed up with nothing. Said Nonova was burning. You know Nonova?”

                “Nonova?” the girl said, shaking her head.

                “Nonova is the great city to the north. The last city where the Americans still live in their glass towers. The last of them do anyways. They have �" they had a great wall of light that protected the earth from the sun. You could see it from Winnipeg at night sometimes. It was bright green and blue and gold, like a rainbow but all alive on the sky. Starbuck and Ibm made the wall. You know these?” The trader gave me a curious glance.

                “Starbuck. Or Starbucks is how we know it. Never heard of Ibm.” The trader said.

                “Ibm was a wise machine maker. He built machines out of plastic that could do all sorts of things. He made the machines that made the wall in the sky. Ibm couldn’t start the machines himself though so he sought out Starbuck, who was his sister, and asked her if she would help him. She agreed but asked her brother to retrieve a black pearl from a Shell. Well, I’m getting off track a little, but you’ve not heard this story?”

Both of them shook their heads and waited for me to continue.

“Well, Ibm did what his sister said. He went to a Shell and he asked the Shell for its pearl but the Shell was asleep and unable to hear him so it wouldn’t open.  Ibm beat his fist on the Shell but the Shell was very sharp. It cut open his arm and he was wounded. That’s why his symbol, if you ever see it on one of his machines, it is all cut up like it is.

Ibm went back to Starbuck and told her that he couldn’t open the Shell because it was asleep and would not wake. Starbuck brewed a coffee for her brother. She said ‘Take this coffee to the Shell. Stand before the Shell and drink a portion of the coffee. Then pour another portion into the mouth of the Shell so that it wakes up.’

And so Ibm took the coffee to the Shell and he stood before the Shell. He drank a portion of the coffee. Then he poured another portion into the mouth of the Shell. Then it woke up and it gave a great big yawn. As it yawned Ibm reached his head into the Shell and sucked the black pearl up into his mouth. Then he spat the black pearl out of his mouth into his cup but it stained his lips black. Ibm took the black pearl back to Starbuck.

Starbuck took the black pearl and anointed the machines with it. Then she took the remainder of the black pearl and she burned it upon the altar. She said to Ibm, ‘Take the fire in a copper cup and carry it to your machines and put a piece of the fire into each of them. Then they will wake up and cast a wall out over the whole earth and it will keep the sun from burning up the earth.’

So Ibm took the fire into a copper cup and carried it to his machines. He put a piece of the fire into each of them. Then the machines woke up and cast a wall out over the whole sky. That is what has kept the sun from burning up the earth.”

The girl looked at me with a confused expression. Then she said “Those are companies.”

“In the north we call them The Companions. Companies? That’s pretty close I suppose. I don’t see how it is you’ve never heard of Ibm though. Haven’t you ever looked up at the wall and wondered what it was? Or who made it?”

“I think you are talking about the Borealis. We can’t see that from here though,” The trader said. The girl took up a book from the little pile of books next to her mattress and began flipping through it intently. I thought it was sort of rude of her.

“So you are Mormons.” I said.

“No,” the Trader said, “We’re just folk.”

“Well that’s what the Mormons called it. Bor-a-lis. None of them knew a lick about how it was made though. They always say God made it. Made it in seven days, they say. God didn’t make nothing in seven days. The Companions made it. They made the glass towers and the roads and one or another of em, probably Pepsi if I had to guess, made these Pops.” I gently poked the pop that was upon the table.

The girl shouted “I found it! Nonova!”

“You did not!” the Trader said. He held his hand out for the book that the girl was holding. She held it up and showed him with her finger.

“It’s in Canada,” she said, “I found Winnipeg too.”

The trader stood up and rather deftly plucked the thick book up out of the girl’s hands. He held the page open as he sat back down and had a look for himself. He nodded, enthused. “Damn it,” he said, “if you didn’t find it. Here, take a look. It’s an atlas.”

“It’s a map?” I said, seeing the open page.

“It’s an atlas. It’s a whole book of maps.”

“Huh,” I said, “can you point out where Nonova is?”

The trader put his finger down on a squiggle of text upon the map. “There it is, that whole area. It’s not a city though, it’s a whole province. In Canada.”

“What about Winnipeg?”

“Right there.”

“And where are we?”

“Right here. Paint Creek, Texas.”

                A Mormon showed me a map once and pointed to the town where they were said to be building the boat. New O-ling, I had taken to calling it in my head. I pointed to the little hook of a peninsula that the Mormon had shown me. “That’s where I’m headed. New O-ling.”

                “New Orleans,” the trader said.

                “I’m more west than I thought I was. Close though.”

                The trader shrugged. “I hope you find something,” he said, “but I heard from another traveler who came through here that the set sail some months ago. Of course I heard from another fellow who comes through every couple of years that the whole thing went up in flames before it ever got onto the water.”

                I scratched my chin a while but said nothing. I broke off a piece of pop for myself. Then I said “I’ll try my luck. Nowhere else to go really.” Then I took a bite of the pop and chewed it slowly.

                The girl said “You still didn’t tell us what happened to Winnipeg.”

                “That?” I asked. I paused and went back over what I’d said to her in my head. I realized she was right, I’d gotten distracted telling them about Ibm and had not managed to get to the point of it.

                I said “Well, there was a great plume of smoke from the north. It was small at first but then it got real big and everyone who came from that direction said it was Nonova. No one knows exactly what happened. There were black clouds though that rolled over the sky. They blotted out the sun. Then the air went all grey and thick like a fog but all the time there was ash falling out of the sky like snow. I’ve never seen snow but my maman described it to me when I was a boy. She might have been pulling my leg. The air was so thick that soon people couldn’t breath outside. The old folk died. The children started to cough and many of them died. Then people started leaving. I stuck around a while, until the ash settled and the sky cleared up. I could still see the wall sometimes after that, once the sky cleared up, but the fire must have broken it because the crops failed. Things got real desperate for everyone then. It was stick around and starve or hoof it. I hoofed it with some others who walked with me a long while. Most of them are dead now. A couple of them joined the Mormons. Others went with the Sioux. My sister married a Sioux boy. But I got it in my head to go get on that Mormon boat they were all talking about. Been heading that way since hearing a preacher by the name Teagan in Cheyenne.”

                “Hmm,” the trader said. He looked at the map a little again, seemed to consider the distance between things. “You know, we had some bad dust storms about four years ago, things got real scarce. A lot of travelers came through talking ‘bout dust storms too. Might be the dust storms had something to do with the ash you got up north. It’s pretty far away though. Might not be related.”

                “Four years ago seems about right. I’ve lost track of the days though.”

                “So have we. I knew a guy once who claimed to have an accurate count but he shot himself when his skin started to turn grey.”

                “Have you seen any grey skins?” the girl asked. Her eyes were wide.

                I looked to the girl, then to the trader who nodded as if with approval. Then I turned back to the girl and said “Yessum. I’ve seen a few.”

                “Really?” the girl asked. She leaned forward on her mattress and folded her leg under herself so that she was sitting on her foot, “we hear stories you know. I’ve never seen one. I doubt I’ll ever see one way out here. Is it true they eat people?”

                I nodded. “It’s true. Far as I could tell. They don’t even cook ‘em. They just start gnawing at em like wild animals.”

                “Lots of folk say they were the reason things collapsed.” The trader said.

                “That ain’t so. It was the wall. It got weaker as Ibm ran out of black pearl. It’s the sun that causes grey skin mainly. It’s called radiation,” I looked at the sun buns all over the trader’s face, then diverted my eyes, “It changes people. That’s why I always wear my hat. Even indoors.” It was my hope that the trader might take that as a hint to start doing the same.

                “Why do you talk about companies like that?” the girl asked.

                The trader gave her a mean look and the girl seemed to recoil. I didn’t quite understand what she was asking. Nor did I understand why the trader should be irritated by her asking it. He said “That’s a rude thing to ask. Do you remember what we said about arguing with the Mormons?”

                “I’m no Mormon.” I said.

                “That’s not what I meant,” the trader said, “It’s just a lot of the folk who come through here have very different stories, you see. We’ve never heard about the wall or about Nonova. We’ve heard of Starbucks, but not Starbuck like you think of her. Actually. you know, I’ve got some coffee if you want some.”

                I nodded my head enthusiastically. “You have coffee? You really have coffee? From Nonova?”

                “I don’t think it came from Nonova but I have coffee.” The trader went to a little cabinet with a broken door and pulled down a small cardboard box. He set it out on the table and pulled out a little red plastic packet. The packet was thin like a little tube. “Folgers. Instant Coffee.”

                “Folgers?” I said, “I’m not sure what that is.”

                “It’s a company. Like Starbucks.” The girl said.

                “I’ve never heard of her. She makes coffee too?”

                The trader nodded, then asked, “You want to try it?”

                “I do.”

                The trader smiled at me and nodded. He went to a shelf and took down a cup which he set on the table. He poured a tiny bit of rain water into the cup but filled it up the rest of the way with the murky looking well water. “Don’t want to use it all up,” he said. I didn’t mind.

Then he carefully tore the plastic coffee packet open and poured it into the cup. The black-brown powder gathered on the surface in little islands. The trader swirled them into the water with a spoon and the water turned jet black like black pearl except it didn’t have the same sort of shine to it. “You are supposed to heat it up,” the trader said, “but it is probably hot enough as it is. Here.” He pushed the coffee forward towards me. I pushed the remaining pop tart on the table toward him in return and gestured for him to take more of it. He waved his hand at me. “No thanks. You should eat that with the coffee. It’s right bitter.”

“The coffee?”

“Yessum. Right bitter. The water doesn’t help either.”

                I took the coffee up to my mouth but paused long enough to smell it. It smelt like tobacco, which I thought made sense because Starbuck’s father is Du Maurier. “It’s tobacco?” I asked.

                “No,” the trader said and he gave me a funny look.

                “It smells like tobacco.”

                “It’s different. Just try it.”

                I took a sip of it and washed the black liquid about in my mouth. The trader laughed at the face I made. “You don’t like it?” he asked.

                I swallowed. Then said, “It tastes like tobacco.”

                The trader and the girl laughed at this. “It’s not tobacco,” the trader said again. I didn’t think he knew what he was talking about though. I got it in my head to try mixing tobacco in water next time I found some. I took a bite of pop tart and washed it down with the coffee. This was a very pleasant combination.

                As I drank it the girl got up from her mattress. She wrapped herself up in her sheet, stained and threadbare as it was so that it would protect her form the sun. She had a wooden crutch that she leaned on so she could walk, but it was awkward and slow. She staggered outside through the back door. She came back in shortly.  I supposed that she had gone to the bathroom. She asked the trader to pull a chair up for her. He pulled one from against the wall and set it at the table for her. She took off her sheet and let it hang on the back of her chair. Her shirt, which was threadbare, clung to her, drenched with sweat.

                They had been a few hours hiding out in the shack but it had grown terribly hot inside of the shack and each of them was red faced and sweaty. The trader’s sun buns were leaking and they smelled like death. I wasn’t going to say anything about it though. There was nothing to be done for it. I knew a man who tried to cut his sun buns off. I knew another man who traded his hat for a bottle of something called Deet that was said to prevent sun buns. It was in a little orange bottle that sprayed clouds of watery stuff into the air. He sprayed it all over his bald head and face. By the end of that day his scalp had turned into a red mountain range that started bleeding. He got his hat back from the guy he’d traded it away to and half near killed the guy too but he died himself a few weeks later. The hat was ruined too, the inside was wet with blood and pus, which was a shame because it was a real nice hat. Old. Made of white leather.

                The girl was looking at the atlas again, carefully so that her forearms or palms wouldn’t touch it and get it sweaty. “I found Chile,” she said and pointed to it on the map. She looked to me and asked “Have you ever met anyone from South America?”

                “Can’t say I have.”

                “Neither have we.” The girl said.

                “That’s not true. I met a Mexican once.” The trader said.

                By this time the sun was beginning to slide down toward the horizon. I could not see it, the shack’s windows faced north and south �" such was the custom �" but I could see the light dwindling outside and knew it was about time for me to be off. I finished my cup of coffee and thanked them for it. It made me feel like there was a fire burning inside of me. Not a hot fire, but a rumbling sort of feeling. It felt like what the wall looked like, blue and green and yellow dancing within in me. I was wide awake and ready to be on my way.

The trader offered to make me something more to eat before I left but I told him I’d content myself with a couple of pops. “I hope you find your way safe,” the trader said, “If you are heading west you might go southwest across lake Stamford. It ain’t much of a lake anymore, but if you follow the 600s they’ll take you across. There used to be a couple of Mormons who patrolled the dam but I’ve not seen them in a few months. The lake’s dry anyways, so you can always hop down onto the side if there’s trouble.” The trader flipped to a page in his atlas and showed me where he was describing. It was a long road across a body of water.

                As I made to go the girl said “What’s your name anyways?”

                “Tim Horton.”

                “Huh,” The trader said, “I’m Elijah. And her name-“

                “My name’s Girl.”

I said goodbye to them and pushed my cart out through the little town, through the dirt palisade back into the desert.

2

                The 600 petered out in a wash of dusty red sand �" it looked almost grey in the dark �" but I followed it for a few days by the metal 600s that dotted the roadside. I can do numbers alright. The sun was rising when I came to where the trader had described. The land fell away on either side of the 600, sloping down in each direction to wide flat planes populated with scatterings of grey and black scrubs. They looked mostly dead but there were tumbles down there that were probably alive still. I hate tumbles. The wind blows them together and they make big thorny clumps that clog up the roads.

                Down below the wind was blowing up clouds of red dust that swirled between the dead branches. The 600 extended out above this as far as I could see on a mound of packed earth and boulders. The asphalt, which was uncovered there, was hugged by two metal guard rails that ran the length of the bridge as far as I could see.

                I pulled my cart off to the side of the road a ways. I had to walk it, kicking it up on one wheel and swiveling it, then kicking it up on a different wheel and swiveling it again �" the wheels wouldn’t go in the dusty soil. I got the cart into position behind some dead scrubs where it could not be easily seen from the road. A sharp pain ran down along my back as I stood upright and stretched out. The sun was still low on the horizon. I crooked my hat to the one side to keep it off of me and I took a little walk to a spot where the earth rose just a little so I could get a better view of the bridge.

                I hate bridges. If a couple of guys want to rob you all they have to do is set up on one side and wait for you to make it near to the other side before they take a shot. If they’ve got a guy with a rifle it’s worse because he can pick you off before you even make it halfway and there’s never much in the way of cover except if there are autos about �" which was rare �" and even then you are a dead man because they can just wait for the sun to flush you out. And you can be sure that they have already got the shady spots.

                If slavers or greyskins or bandits come at you from either direction all you can do is run the other way, jump off or like a guy I knew used to say ‘get fucked.’  This wasn’t exactly a bridge though. The Trader had called it a ‘dam’ and it looked like there was enough room to toss the cart over the side in a pinch. I thought I might even be able to hide on the other side of the guard rail and go unseen by night.

                I couldn’t cross until night anyways. I returned to my cart and unfolded the grey plastic canvas that was my tent. It was attached to the cart so that I could fold it up real easily and stick it back in when I was done with it. The soil was too soft for the stakes so I ended up just weighing the tarp down with sand and when I was done I sat with my back against the cart beneath a grey semicircle of the plastic tent. I centered the flap so that I could look out toward the dam.

                I opened a can of tomatoes with my knife and plucked the little soggy red chunks out with my knife. They were cool in my mouth and sweet. As I crushed the soggy chunks between my teeth and my tongue. The juice ran sweet over my tongue and I pushed it through my teeth. I drank the sweet water right out of the can. Carefully. I knew a woman who cut her lip on a can of peaches. Her name was Aritzia. Very pretty girl. She was from Winnipeg too. The cut turned into a black sore that rotted away half of her face. She lived about half a year that way but it took the spirit out of her right quick. A guy she’d been kissing on before the rot started got it too. He lived a little longer but while he was dying he’d say “Damn Aritizia! Damn her to hell!” The rot got up to his forehead before he died. You could see the bone round his eyes and nose and all his teeth fell out. Then he went blind and asked us to leave him behind. “Damn Aritzia!” he’s probably still haunting that stretch of desert.

                I tried to sleep a little in the tent by the 600 but I also watched and I listened for signs of life. I couldn’t see or hear anything though and the dam stretched out further than I could see in any case. After a while the wind picked up which was nice because it cooled things down a little even though it blew in hot gusts like a demon’s breath. Finally I closed the flap of the tent up because of the dust which was kicked up. I put my hat over my eyes and listened to the wind whip and pull at the canvas until I fell asleep.          

                I was back in Sioux city. There was the little trading post there beneath the little metal truss. It was a settlement on a bridge spanning a muddy river. They’d tied all sorts of cloth and flags and plywood sheets into the truss so that the sun that shined through during the day was diffused by a hundred different colors. There were shanties that ran the length of the truss separated by narrow alleyways. The Sioux called it Keya, or something like that, which meant ‘Little Turtle.’

There were folk from Winnipeg and others from the north who came with us. There was Aritizia and Dan, the ghost of the desert. There was Buckley and Daiya who was Buckley’s daughter. She was just a baby. There was Maro, Nitzi, Charles, Ama and there were others who I recognized too but whose names I did not know. Then I saw her through the crowd, Tolko, my sister. Her eyes were wet with joy and she was holding her belly as if to show me. She was pregnant then by a Sioux named Mato. He was there with her and they were both smiling and happy. They looked so frail. But they were happy too.

                “Où étais-tu grand frère?” she asked. Where have you been big brother?

                “J'ai été loin.” I said. I have been far away.

                She smiled at me and gently patted her belly. She said something else to me but I couldn’t hear her. My ears were ringing. Mato held her in one arm. I wanted to hug her too. I wanted to hug them both but then the little plaza seemed to disappear and I was with Mato on the barricade.

The whole canopy overhead, the tattered clothes and flags, were burning and whipping about in the wind. Little scraps of burning cloth rained down on the little shacks. The White-hoods cheered from the riverbank as their whistlers fell from the sky. The explosions  tore the truss apart. The bridge trembled. Bits of steel and wood and concrete fell all around us in the smoke. Behind us, women and children and frail old men were screaming. They were dying and there was nothing we could do for them but wait for the White hoods to advance. Mato was trembling behind his shield.

                There was the long whistle from above that brought panic into the eyes of the men around me. This whistle was different from the others, it was the one that I knew. It was the one that was seared into my memory like a slave’s brand. A long sharp whistle that seemed to hover in the air  �" an eerie announcement of death. There was the crack of the explosion off to one side of where we were standing and my ears were ringing again as I pulled myself off of the ground. That section of the barricade was gone, blown apart into a thousand scraps of wood and steel. There was Mato upon the ground. The boy was covered in blood and he was saying something to me but I couldn’t hear him. His eyes were wide with such pain and fear and understanding. Understanding that this was his end. That there was no keeping on, no coming back. He smiled at me like he was laughing and then he died.

                On the side of the 600 my heart was pounding in my chest. I hated dreams. Mato was gone and so was Tolko, I imagined that nearly everyone from Winnipeg was gone now. I’d certainly never see them again, scattered as the survivors were to the far corners of the earth. I was reminded of a rhyme we sang when I was a boy.

Titans fly and titans fall.

One and two and three and four.

Down deep they wait for us to call,

 

 One day up, a new clear war.

Five and six and seven and eight,

Call for one and watch them soar.

 

Titans fly and titans wait.

Nine and ten and even more,

Fill the skies for our true fate.

               

There were more lines but I couldn’t remember them. When I was a boy we would sing the song and dance in a sort of circle. Then on the ten count we’d all jump up into the air and fall down onto our backs in a riot of laughter. Whoever landed last would then be called The Titan. I lifted my hat, hoping for darkness but the tarp still glowed with daylight. The wind pulled the tarp taught and I watched the little plastic fibers where they were starting to split apart. I’d need to find a new one soon. I toyed with the song a little more in my head. I hummed it to myself and pulled open the tent flap a little to peek out.

It was bright. The wind had died down but it had left everything covered in a fresh layer of red dust. The scrub bushes looked like spindly little red clouds rising out of the ground. I eyed the dam road again and listened for any sort of sound. There was only the wind though. The dam road disappeared on the horizon and there was no telling what was on the other side. I got up onto my knees so I could fish a pair of binoculars out of the cart. My head brushed against the top of the tent and I felt dust slide off.

One of the lenses on the binoculars was cracked but they still worked fine. I wiped the sweat from my eyes and gazed out along the dam road. I looked for a long time and carefully. In many places, but not everywhere, there was enough room on either side of the road between the guard rail and the slope so that if I had to lift the cart over the rail I could probably do it. I might tip the cart over trying but I could retrieve anything that fell down the slope easily enough. The real problem would be at the other side. If there was anyone over there preying on travelers I’d have to turn back. Part of me wanted to just backtrack and find another route. I put the binoculars away and continued to mull it over. I drank some of my water and tried to get a little more sleep.

When I woke again the sun was on the horizon. I’d decided while I was asleep that I would make the crossing. If, after half of the night, I still could not see some sign of the other side by the moonlight I’d turn back. And if I saw so much as a flick of flame, or a tent, or any other sign of folk gathered at the far side I’d turn back too.

Inside of the tent I sat upright on my knees with my head hung downwards. I took a quarter out of my pocket and held it between the palms of my hands as I prayed. “Bluecross, insure me from danger,” I said, “See that my way is clear or else quote me my danger that I ought to turn back. Defend me from anyone who would do me harm and deliver me to safety. I bury this token in gratitude, here in the sand, for all you have done already. Thank you. Amen.”

 I buried the quarter in the sand. Then I packed up my things by the dwindling sunlight and by the time I made it back onto the road, the moon was my only companion. I pushed on, leaving tracks in the dust until I got onto the dam road itself where the dust cleared up. The asphalt was rough and uneven. The cart rattled like all hell in front of me.

I walked for a few hours like this under the moonlight. All that could be seen on either side of the road was scrubs and sand. At one point there was the spindly trunk of a long dead tree sticking up right out of the center of the road. There the asphalt was particularly broken up and one side of the road had started to buckle. It sloped downward leaving five or six feet between it’s lowest point and the guard rail which had refused the downward pull of the earth and ran straight and true over the gap. The petrified wooden posts hung down like teeth.

The wind picked up a while after that, breeding dust storms in the lowlands that soon swelled up over the dam road in thick gusts. The dust thickened and blotted out the moon. Dust beat against my face and got into my mouth and my eyes. I pulled my bandana up over my mouth and nose. My eyes burned with the dust but it was so dark with the dust in the air that I couldn’t see anything anyways so I just shut my eyes and pushed on slowly, feeling the cart rattle in my hands. I supposed that the dust storm was to my advantage in a way. If I couldn’t see, neither could anyone else out there and they didn’t know I was coming. If they were even looking, they wouldn’t be able to see. The wind, coarse and biting as it was, also masked the sound of my cart rattling on the rugged asphalt.

I stopped after a time and drank some water, taking it to my mouth underneath the bandana. I opened my eyes despite the dust and looked into the darkness in either direction along the road. I couldn’t see much of anything. I could barely make out the glint of the metal on my cart and I thought I could make out where the guard rails were but my eyes might have been filling in the gaps for me.

The dust storm raged on as I walked and going got slower because the asphalt got worse. My wheels kept getting stuck in little crevices so that I had to keep stopping to pull it out, but also I started moving more slowly to try to avoid getting stuck. It was about this time that I started to seriously consider turning around. If the wheel got stuck one more time, I’d tell myself, then I’ll head back. But I kept moving forward each time.

One of the front wheels became lodged in the asphalt and I had to move around to the front of the cart to pull it up. The metal of the cart had a slippery coating of dust. As I wiped the dust away and lifted the wheel, I turned my head up toward the horizon. It was still dark and dusty but I thought I saw a light in that direction. I let go of the cart, stood, and rubbed the sand out of my eyes. All was darkness and dust. I looked a minute longer, keeping my eyes open as far as I could without getting too much dust in them. The dust thinned out for a moment and there it was again. A light. There was a light at the far end of the road. There was someone coming up the road behind me.

The light was white and looked to be electric. The dust concealed it again but it was still there and when the dust thinned again it looked closer. It looked a lot closer. I pushed my shoulder against the cart hard to get it unstuck but it wouldn’t budge. I fought with it a while, keeping a constant eye in the direction of the light.

“Bluecross save me.” I said. The light was even closer now. It was bright too. And it wasn’t one light but two, side by side and hurrying at me. I tried again with the cart but it was no good. It was stuck. For this one I’d need to get my pry out of the cart but it was packed away and the lights were coming on fast. I was going to have to abandon the cart.

I moved quickly, taking only essential things from the cart and ferrying them to the side of the road. I tossed over cans of food, the pops, the rice, anything I could eat and the water, a bottle of vinegar, the binoculars, a grimy bottle of kerosene and a few other odds and ends. I took my pistol out too and hopped over the guard rail. The lights were so close now that I could see the red color of the dust in the air. I laid down flat on the rocky slope so that I could peek through the underside of the guard rail.

The lights were moving very fast. One moment, still quite far away, they covered the remaining distance in only a few seconds, coming to a halt before the cart. All I could see were the two bright glowing white lights that lit up a column of dusty air and in the center of that column was my little cart. I held my pistol out carefully. If it was one guy, I could probably handle that. Two guys would be pressing my luck. Anything beyond that and my best bet would be to just hide and hope they moved on. They would take all my spare hats and there would be nothing I could do for it except sit and wait and hope that they didn’t shine those bright lights over the side. If they had a dog I was done for sure.

I watched and waited for someone to step forward into the light but nothing happened. Nothing happened for a long time. The lights just glowed still and silent in the dark. The two lights were a few feet apart and I got the idea that this must be an auto. I’d never seen a working auto before except perhaps the horse machines that the White-hoods rode.  But those had been loud roaring machines and this thing was quiet. All I could hear was the wind, no engines, no voices.

I felt my heart racing in my chest and I started up a nervous sweat. My eyes also were in great pain too. I tried rubbing the dust out of my eyes but my hands were so dusty and my face was so sweaty that I only managed to make it worse. There I waited, unsure whether I was prey or predator. It felt an awful lot like prey, but the longer I laid there the more confused I became because nothing happened. The lights were still.

I started to think that this must be the end. Whoever or whatever was out there knew I was there. They knew I was there and they were waiting patiently for me to slip up. It had been a good run, I’d made it far south by the trader’s map, but this was the end. This was where I died. I thought of the others �" where they had fallen, how they had fallen. If it was my time so be it, but I wasn’t going to be made the fool. I’d seen too many men die for being the fool once too often.

                I laid there, on the slope and I waited wracked with anticipation for them to make a move. It was unsettling though. The quiet scene was framed by such darkness and the whole world had been condensed into this one little illuminated scene. I waited through the darkness. I waited for hours, growing tired and thirsty too until the sun started to peek it’s head up over the horizon. As it did I was able to make out the shape of a silvery dust-caked auto. Light peeked in through the windows and I lifted my head slightly to try to see who was inside.

Why was nobody stepping out? What were they doing? They must have seen me. They must have been toying with me. I scooted carefully along the guard rail so I was nearer to the side of the auto. I held my pistol carefully in both hands and peered over the guard rail into the windows.

                The auto appeared empty. I aimed my pistol in its direction and eyed it tentatively. I carefully stepped over the guard rail and approached the auto. I came to the window and wiped away a thin layer of dust with my palm. It was eerily cold to the touch and as I pulled my hand away I saw the driver. A skeleton in blue jeans and a leather jacket was leaned over to one side with his head in the passenger seat. I laughed and pointed north to Nonova. “America!” I shouted and I laughed with relief.

                It wasn’t even locked. When I swung the door open a shelf of dust fell out of the seam of the door like a little avalanche. A wave of cool air hit me. There were glowing images in the dash and on the steering wheel was a big T. I thought I knew that T from someplace and then it struck me. This wasn’t just any auto, this was Tesla’s Auto. How many times had I left an offering at one of Tesla’s altars? Every time I had seen one along the roadside! I prayed to Bluecross and he sent Tesla’s Auto! And who was this in the seat? This must have been Nikolai Tesla himself! The electric man! An American! A real red blooded American!

                I fell to my knees next to Tesla’s Auto. I removed my hat �" feeling the heat of the rising sun upon my head �" and set it on the ground next to me. I prostrated myself before Tesla’s Auto. “Thank you Tesla for coming. Thank you Bluecross for sending him here to protect me. Praise be! Praise be to all of the Americans! To Starbuck and Ibm and Walgrin! to Exxon and to Mazon and The Oracle! To Nike! To Atandt! To all of the Americans! Thank you! Amen! Amen!” I kissed the asphalt.

                I pulled myself up, put my hat back on and pulled a quarter out of my pocket. I reached in and set it on the dusty dash of Tesla’s Auto. Then I addressed Nikolai himself, “I’m going to set you upright there.” I leaned in carefully and held him by his leather jacket. I pulled on it lightly hoping to set him upright but he was quite delicate and his right arm fell apart. I got him mostly upright though. There was a cloth strap over his chest that tightened and helped keep him in place. There was a foul looking reddish brown residue dried on the seat beneath him and on the floor of car, I thought that must have been what was left of the rest of him.

                I regathered my supplies and loaded them into the back seat of Tesla’s Auto. Most of the things I threw over the guard rail were at the top of the mound. Only a few cans had rolled down the slope and one of the water jugs had burst open but otherwise everything was there. I was drenched in sweat by the time I got myself into the passenger seat. I pulled the door shut and felt the cool air as it flowed through the little vents. It was a miracle. I held my face up to the vent and felt the air upon the sweat of my brow and upon my neck. It felt like winter in Winnipeg. It was colder than it had ever been in Winnipeg though. I wondered if this was how cold it needed to be to snow. I laughed at myself and leaned back against the seat. It was so comfortable. I’d sat in auto seats before but most of them were rotten away to metal springs.

                There was a big glowing display in the center of the dash. I thought that this was like a glass box. It was clearly electric but it seemed to be made of light. There was a square with some words on the center of the screen. There were two smaller squares inside of the big square each of which had a word in it. There was a long word in one and a short word in the other. I reached my hand forward and lightly touched the screen. It lit up more brightly than before, as if in response to my touching it.

I touched the smaller word and the square went away. The image that replaced it was a confusing mess of green and white with lines and dots and all number of words on it. It was the numbers on the lines that helped me figure that it was a map. There was a little 600 like a road sign. I recognized the stretch of road from the map that the trader had shown me and there was a little red arrow which I thought must be where we, Nikolai and I, were. On one side of the display was a little top down view of the Auto along with some numbers which I didn’t know the meaning of. At the top was a big 0.

“Nikolai?” I said, recalling the stories, “I’d like to go to New Orleans.”

Nothing happened. I waited a moment then said “Nikolai? Tesla? I’d like to go to New Orleans.”

The square reappeared on the screen, the one with the long word and the short word. I thought it was the same square but it was hard to tell. This time I touched the long word. The square disappeared again. Then the steering wheel appeared to turn of it’s own accord. The auto started to move. It maneuvered around my cart and then it was really going and the cart disappeared into the dust behind us. The 0 at the top of the display ran through the set of numbers quickly up to 46, 48, 50. It seemed to simply fly over the broken asphalt.

Quickly we were across the dam and out of the dust. We zoomed past the area beyond the bridge before I had time to even see if there was anyone camped out there. I watched as the red arrow on the glass box traced the blue line over the 600. We went south and fast. I reached about the seat into the back and I pulled out a pop. The blue wrapper crinkled as I opened it. I put one pop out on the dash for Nikolai. Then I took the other one out for myself and ate it while I watched the desert roll by. It made me dizzy.

3

In the desert Tesla brought me to one of its altars. I’d seen one or two of the little red stations in nearly every town I had passed through. They stood along the side of the road like plastic tombstones, each with a silvery white T emblazoned on the front. The altar in the desert lit up as we approached. The whole plastic shell glowed a soft red and there came a bright beam of white light from the T on the front. The top of the altar, which was where I always left my quarters, opened up and the whole front of the altar opened up also revealing a compact little compartment out of which came two small flying machines  - like Mazon’s machines, the ones you see in the sky now and then. They were sleek metal and plastic with little rotating wings that spun so fast that they appeared not to move at all. One of the machines, this one was smaller, zoomed quickly up and down the length of the auto and somehow it whisked away the dust and dirt from the glass outside of the glass. The other machine, the larger one, opened a small flap on the front of the auto and pulled out a thick red and black rod which it took with it back into the altar. It handed the rod off to a mechanical arm that took it down into the earth. The mechanical arm came back up and handed the rod, maybe it was a different rod �" I thought it might be a very big Duracell  - back to the larger of the two flying machines which then swiftly stuck the rod back into place in the front of the Auto. Then Tesla’s Auto took off again, getting back onto the road and setting off at a breakneck pace.

                I still wasn’t adjusted to the speed �" although it wasn’t the speed so much as it was the occasional speeding up and slowing down that made me feel sick. And the turns. And sometimes there were little hills that made my stomach go up into my chest. On the long empty stretches I was good but there was not much to see out there. Empty desert and empty towns. We passed through a little town that looked ripe for salvaging but I didn’t know how to stop the Auto. I figured out that the little icons on the top and the bottom of the screen did different things but most of them had words and buttons that I couldn’t make out. There was a power button but I knew I probably shouldn’t touch that, if I had turned the Auto off I might not have been able to turn it back on again. I played around with the other buttons; I figured out which one brought me back to the map and after playing around with the map a little I figured out how to zoom out and then back in.

                When I zoomed out I saw that the blue line that traced the length of the road wasn’t actually headed to New Orleans like I had hoped. The blue line ended someplace in the big peninsula to the southeast. I played around with the interface for a long while trying to figure out how to change the destination. I didn’t get it but I did figure out that if I touched the little fan icon I could make it even colder in the Auto. I hit the down arrow until it was at 60, then I went beyond that to LO. Some of the buttons had intuitive little symbols. I could make the cold air blow from the top vents or the bottom vents or both. There were other ones, a big circle one and a snaky arrow one, that didn’t seem to do anything.

                Lo was real cold too, colder than anything I had ever known before and my tarp, which I had draped over myself to keep the sun off when it glared through the windows, doubled as a blanket. The tarp was filthy though and when I unfolded it I got dust all over the place. “Sorry Nikolai,” I said, glancing at the skeleton in the driver’s seat. I offered him some of the raw rice that I’d been snacking on and set a handful of it on the dash for him. The little grains bounced and scattered away across the surface.

                The first problem I had in Tesla’s Auto was that there was nowhere to go to the bathroom. I considered going on the floor but that seemed a surefire way to offend Nikolai and the last thing I needed was to bring the wrath of one of the Companions onto myself. It took me a while to figure it but while I was considering opening the door and doing a sort of squat at high speed I found some buttons that let me open the windows. The windows sort of disappeared down into the door. The wind beat upon my face in harsh torrents, tossing my hair up and my hat off my head. It fell between my back and the seat. My ears were filled with the harsh kraw of the wind. It was tricky going out the window but I managed to figure it, leaning out one way or the other depending on what needed doing. The first time I even risked going during the day �" I had been holding it a long time already �" and I got a sun bun on my a*s that I could feel starting to blister.

                I got into the rhythm of things though quick enough. I slept during the day �" there was a little lever on the side of the seat that let me lean the chair back �" and I sat up through the night to watch the stars and the occasional settlement fly by. Even in Tesla’s Auto I had bad dreams. “Can you make the dreams go away?” I asked Nikolai hopefully but he said nothing.

                “When I was a boy,” I said, “My mother told me a story about you. She said that in the city of Chicago there once lived a giant evil creature called an Elephant. It had great big teeth that stuck out of its face like swords and a giant leathery tongue that it used to pluck up small children. She told me that if I ever saw an Elephant I was to run away. Run away and pray to you. It was said that when you heard about how the Elephant was plucking up and eating the little children of Chicago, you went there in your Auto and you built two electric machines, one on either side of the road. The little children gathered around you while you built the machines and you told them ‘Don’t touch these wires, or these nodes, or these machines or you will die.’

Then you went in your Auto to where the Elephant was known to be lurking and you tried to lure him by saying something believable ‘Elephant, I know a place where there are many children for you to eat. I could show you where if you only had something to trade.’

The Elephant said ‘You dare bargain with me Tesla? I should eat you here and now but I know that Ford would not like it if I did so. I do not trust you and I won’t give you a thing. Be gone.’

                ‘Oh,’ you said, ‘but then I see you are not an Elephant at all. I’d heard you were fearsome but here you fear my father and here you fear me. I had not taken you for a donkey!’

                The Elephant was outraged.  He charged at you and you sped away, keeping just out of reach until you passed between the two machines which you had built upon the side of the road. You passed through unharmed but as the Elephant passed through them the machines called down a bolt of lightning that cracked through the air and struck the Elephant dead.”

                I had leaned up against the window while I spoke and was gazing up at the Elephant in the night sky. I turned to Nikolai and I said jokingly “Is any of that true?” Nikolai said nothing.

                “I saw an elephant once in a place called a ‘museum.’ It was a terrible sight. I thought it was alive when I saw it, but it had been frozen solid somehow. It just stood there and stared at me with such sad eyes. I think it was sad because it wanted to eat me, but it couldn’t because of whatever had been done to it. It was probably for the best, but I remember those eyes. I think your way was probably better. Nothing should have to live for nothing.”

                We came to a city in the night where the glass towers still glowed. We passed glowing Companion signs along the highway. I knew a guy who used to call them bill-boards. I asked him why he called them that but he didn’t know why. I didn’t recognize most of the Companions there. There were so many different Companions but many of their signs, there as with everywhere else, had pictures of smiling people. Nobody smiled like that anymore. Now people were stern and sad. They were sad even when they smiled and sometimes they smiled because they were too sad to do anything else. I’d seen many dying men smile and those had been real smiles.

                The highway sloped down through the glowing buildings into what looked to be a long corridor of buildings but Tesla’s Auto crawled to a halt. There was something on the road, covering it up completely, a wave of black that seemed to crash upon the pavement before receding. My eyes adjusted to it in the dark and after a moment I saw that it was water. There was water as far ahead of us as I could see. The electric lights danced on the caps of the waves. I rolled down my window and smelt a pungent odor like nothing I had ever smelt before. It was salt. It was the ocean, come to meet us in the middle of the land. The map said we were still far to the north of where the sea was supposed to be but there it was in front of us, a sea rolling through the buildings. I thought it might not be a sea. It might just be a lake but the Mormons had said to me that the sea smelled like salt and this smelled like salt.

                Tesla’s Auto turned about of its own accord and on the map it drew a new route for us to follow, still aiming at that big peninsula. I still was wishing that I could get Nikolai to take me to New Orleans but I figured he had his reasons for taking me to the big peninsula. The new route back tracked a ways and then went north a far ways before trying to go east again. I kept my window down a while to smell the strange salty air. My tarp kicked up against the wind and I had to tuck it in under my butt.

                Riding with Nikolai had gone on longer than I expected. I had rice left and a packet of pops but I’d eaten everything else. The real problem was water. At some point I would have to get out of Tesla’s Auto to fill up my containers. Ideally I’d get out somewhere and scavenge for food too or maybe we’d run into some traders. Still there was the essential issue, I didn’t know how to stop the Auto and unless I could figure that out I’d have to risk letting the Auto drive off.

                There were a few little compartments inside of the Auto that I rummaged through. I found a bottle of brown alcohol in the little drawer in the dash. There was some grey scum floating on the surface and it smelt like death. I put it back with the bits of paper and random junk. I took the rubber bands that were in there though. A couple of them anyways that still had some pull to them.  I found some sort of medicine in the little drawer between the seats but I had no way of telling what it was for, just pills in an orange bottle.  “Sure you don’t have any water hidden around here?” I asked Nikolai.

                Tesla’s Auto met the ocean in the middle of the road again and it changed its route again. This time it backtracked a ways and aimed even further north than before. “How come the ocean isn’t in the right place?” I asked Nikolai.

                This happened a few times. We’d find the next big road going east and then we’d follow it until it disappeared under the black water. Each time we stopped for a few seconds while Nikolai chose a new route. He was persistent if nothing else, that was something that didn’t really come across from the stories. In the stories he had been something of a trickster.

                I woke to the feeling of Tesla’s Auto slowing down. I rose, expecting to see the ocean again. I thought it was daytime but It was very dark. There were no stars and the lights of the Auto on the pavement were all that could be seen. As the Auto stopped a figure came into view. It was a man. He was naked and hunched over another man. He glanced up at the Auto with squinted eyes. He held something out in the air to shield his eyes from the light. In his hands was a piece of flesh, an arm perhaps, dripping with blood and gristle. The man’s skin was grey leather and his emaciated body appeared bent and twisted by time. There were tufts of grey hair upon his head. The man hopped out of the way, dragging his companion with him.

                The Tesla moved on but slowly and it occurred to me as we went on that we were in some sort of tunnel. There were more broken people out there in the shadows too. They stood idly in the dark, wandering, aimless. They paid the Auto little mind, stepping aside when it came close. They seemed to dislike the light and they seemed to move out of the way instinctively. “Nikolai,” I whispered, “Where have you brought us?” I kept myself hidden beneath my tarp and peeked out through a hole. I wasn’t sure that they could get into Tesla’s Auto, something told me that Nikolai would protect me, but I still didn’t want them to swarm. One of the greyskins was more bold than the others and he stood defiantly in front of the light for a time, gesturing violently in front of the Auto. A prompt came up on the screen in the Auto. I pressed one of the options and the Auto swiveled and went around the man. He jumped at the Auto and collided with it but the Auto rolled on.

                I had seen greyskins before but never up close. I knew that if they saw me they would probably try to eat me. Mostly they looked sad. Sad and lost, like people I’d seen on the road with nowhere to go and no hope to live for. A man I once walked with said the greyskins were people who forgot how to speak. They grunted and howled and sometimes they screamed but they didn’t speak and I wager that they can’t speak.  I wager that they can’t think either. Not like a human can.

                Deeper in the tunnel there were more of them and they lurked among corpses and skeletons. Many of them were greyskin corpses I thought but there were humans too. The greyskins ate everything they could get their hands on. A man I knew told me that they could eat plastic and black pearl but I don’t see how he could have possibly known those things. The corpses got thicker and older, like Nikolai �" they were piles of bones, not all of them human. The Auto had to maneuver more carefully because there were so many bodies. I could hear the crunching of bones beneath the tires.

                There were more greyskins too. They kept to the shadows but I could see the reflections of their eyes in the darkness. They watched the Auto pass by, but they offered no special reaction, no supplication, no offerings and that was when it occurred to me what it was that set the greyskins apart from humans. They didn’t know about the Companions. They had no connection to the past or to what the Companions had left behind. They had no stories about how to live or about how to survive well. No, they had nothing except the pain of hunger and a fear of the light.

                I spied a light in the distance, the end of the tunnel. We weaved through the tunnel a while longer until we got outside. The sun was high overhead and before us was another submerged city, with glass towers poking up out of the water. They caught the sunlight and seemed to glow with it. I had to divert my eyes because it was so bright. The Auto rolled on towards the sea between empty buildings.

                By this time I was completely out of water. When we rolled up to the edge of the sea an idea occurred to me about how I might be able to make the Tesla stop. As it stopped by the water and while Nikolai calculated a new route I opened the door wide and sat there a moment watching the screen. There was a little icon that indicated that the door was open and when the new route was calculated the Tesla did not immediately drive off. Instead it seemed to wait for me to close the door. I shut the door and the Tesla started to maneuver. I opened the door again and it stopped.

                So I got out of the Tesla and stood a moment breathing in the salty air. It felt good to stretch my legs, the solid ground felt almost foreign to me. I went down to the water and I took my water jugs with me. My throat was so parched that before trying to fill the jugs I bent down and took up a handful of the water. The little rainbows of black pearl swirled on the surface. I drank it eagerly. It tasted like the can of SPAM, salty and not terribly pleasant. I had drank much worse tasting water in the past. I drank more of it. Then I filled up my water jugs and carried them back to the Tesla.

                We went by another road through the city. We passed over buildings and houses until we emerged on a road that went north along the edge of the sea. There were some live trees there with yellowing leaves that seemed to cling to their branches out of desperation. Away from the buildings I could also see far out across the sea. There was no land on the other side. It struck me as strange that Nikolai’s Map would have misjudged the location of the sea so badly.

                No matter how much I drank I only seemed to grow thirstier. I was exhausted too and I tried to sleep but even in the night it would not come. I laid myself back in my seat and watched the stars, how they seemed to flicker in the darkness. My eyes were heavy and my body ached all over. I thought that I might be getting sick.

                I’d seen lots of people die before. Mostly it was stupidity that did it or they were testing fate. Mostly they had it coming to them. If I got sick I would almost certainly die. I looked at Nikolai questioningly “What’s it like?” I asked, “to die?”

                “It’s not so bad,” I thought I heard him say, “You can come along for the ride.”

                I opened the last of the pops. I set one of them out on the dash for Nikolai and I ate the other one myself. My mouth was terribly dry so I washed it down with the foul tasting water. I slept a little after that and I even dreamed. The dreams were not so bad, I saw my sister and my mother in a field of golden oriels. I saw a shimmering beacon in the sky. I saw the Hall of Companions and there, gathered in celebration were all the Companions and all of my companions also. It was Nonova and there the wall still kept the sun away.